%0 Journal Article
%T The Haunting of L.S. Lowry: Class, Mass Spectatorship and the Image at The Lowry, Salford, UK
%A Zo£¿ Thompson
%J Societies
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/soc3040332
%X In a series of momentary encounters with the surface details of The Lowry Centre, a cultural venue located in Salford, Greater Manchester, UK, this article considers the fate of the image evoked by the centre¡¯s production and staging of cultural experience. Benjamin¡¯s notion of ¡®aura¡¯ as inimical to transformations of art and cultural spectatorship is explored, alongside its fatal incarnation in Baudrillard¡¯s concept of ¡®simulation¡¯. L.S. Lowry, I argue, occupies the space as a medium: both as a central figure of transmission of the centre¡¯s narrative of inclusivity through cultural regeneration, and as one who communes with phantoms: remainders of the working-class life and culture that once occupied this locale. Through an exploration of various installations there in his name, Lowry is configured as a ¡®destructive character¡¯, who, by making possible an alternative route through its spaces, refuses to allow The Lowry Centre to insulate itself from its locale and the debt it owes to its past.
%K aura
%K simulation
%K The Lowry
%K cultural regeneration
%K haunting
%K class
%U http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/332